So, a quick question; when the kickstarter re-launches, is there some sort of "all backers of these projects back up the new project" thing or do I need to be 'quick' to get the 95$ Early Bird special again :P?

Superbacker

I recommend rock paper shotgun, they are a well known PC gaming site and do plenty of articles on kickstarter (just search for the tag kickstarter on their site and you'll get a huge number of results), you can request an article here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hey-prs-and-developers/

you already have an in game engine and footage so it should be easy to get them do an article. They like to do articles on projects that have proof that they can actually be a thing since they get a lot of requests.

Since you're absolutely going for Android, I would talk to the guys that run the NVISION news app. It's really popular and has trailors for upcoming games and features kickstarter projects all the time!

Quick question we'll probably be posting in a few places: for our relaunch, what websites do you think would be interested in giving us some press? What websites that might go for TCG's or tactics games or android games would be worth taking a crack at?

I only found out about this kickstarter a few days ago and found it quite cool and nostalgic as I played a bit of the old Alteil. One thing that you can certainly mention more is that this is a game that doesn't play like other TCGs. There are more than enough Magic clones - most online TCGs are this with some sort of fix to the broken resource mechanics - and we don't need any more. Best of luck and I will back again if this attempt is not successful.

Superbacker

gameplay videos are a must, and should be pretty easy to do, they would go a long way in showing people how this differs from other TCG's. I also agree that changing the kickstarter logo to show something like the gameboard layout or card art would be better than the current one, would definitely catch the eye of more people.

There are several new Online TCGs in development right now. Hex, Hearthstone, Infinity war, Scrolls, Yu-gi-oh, and MtGO.
On your relaunch,please focus more about the strategy where player does not relies upon luck of the draw. It is kinda hard to persuade my brother and friends to join this Kickstarter when they are playing betas of those new TCGs. If possible, please show more game play videos.
I think that you will get more backers if you get greenlight in steam.
Some of my favorite TCG died within this year. R.I.P Sword Girls and Carte.
I think that those TCGs died because the lack of new players. Please make Alteil beginner friendly. If the game is too grindy or not fun, it will died within a year or so.

Superbacker

I think that showing more actual game play would help a lot (show how tactical it is). Also, I have seen too many comments from people that seem to think that all F2P games are just "Pay to Win" games in disguise. THIS IS NOT TRUE WHEN IT COMES TO ALTEIL. Show the players the many FREE ways that you can get cards (TB, FM, Point Cards, 5 of 7, etc). Show everyone how special and unique Alteil is and how how every card is a living breathing character who doesn't just die from one hit (like in Yugioh and many other card games). I think highlighting some of the characters from the game and with some of their story elements would be nice as well, almost like a featurette (May want to focus on some of the cards from the Horizon Core deck for this since there will be lots of new player).

Instead of just having "Final Days, Alteil Horizons" as your kickstarter open, it may help bring in people by placing some of the character art from the cards in the splash. Since at a glance, to someone who is just browsing kickstarter, a simple splash like what is there now, doesn't really draw me in. Which is a shame as once you click on it it looks so fun and the beautiful art on the cards.

Rereading what I had written, I can see how I came across being hostile and rude with an accusing tone to you and the project. I would like to make it clear that this was not what I intended and I apologize for setting the wrong tone and my poor choice of words. I do want to see the project succeed and I will certainly be around for what you guys have in store for us next.

I've been watching this every day hoping the final run spike would occur. I'm sad that, at least currently, it looks like round 1 won't make the mark. Is there going to be a pledge page on the Alteil site we can go ahead and contribute to now to give some jumpstart funding in the interim ?

Hello again, Apocoplay. I just had two suggestions that came to mind if a reboot is successful.

#1: To ensure the game has more players I think it would be a great idea if the Japanese players of Alteil play on the same servers as the English players.

#2: I understand a lot of people want an Auction House. However, I really like how Alteil (currently) forces you to create decks from packs you open as it gives the game a sense of progression. Of course, this really only benefits those who are willing to shell out more cash. So my question is, if there is going to be an Auction House where players can buy specific cards, can you still have "exclusives" that cannot be put on the Auction House, like EX cards? From a game design standpoint, if you can acquire every single card from the Auction House it would take away from duel variety/player uniqueness and effectively almost removes the need to buy booster packs/boxes.

I will be upgrading my pledge later this week. Don't give up team, you have my full faith and support as well as every single backer here!

I really liked the idea of this project and even though I am completely new to the world of Alteil, I was impressed enough to throw my support behind it. That said, I do share the same concerns that others have brought up such as how the monetary model will turn out. I am sure you have your reasons that you cannot share the details with us and while it can be seen as a shady move, I would give it the benefit of a doubt.

In any case, I really love all the support that has been shown for the game thus far and I will certainly be down for a second round! I am looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us next. Thank you for keeping us updated and stay positive!

Superbacker

Well. I will be down for round 2. Maybe in the reboot you could offer a reward, if you guys plan on attending Pax East, it is in April. Over 50k people are attending Pax yearly now. Since I'm local, Ahem Cape Cod, even slightly higher reward tier might me a great incentive.

@gio
Unfortunately, there's no way to add more time. Usually, you would have to turn off the Kickstarter and launch a "new" one with the same material but a different end date. Right now we're wrapped up with a bunch of negotiations, trying to get a playable demo ready for the press (actually got some major outlets signed on for it), and maybe scaring up a little side-funding so we could ask for a smaller total. FYI there's no monetary risk backing a kickstarter up for a potential reboot like ours, and in fact there's a built in advantage (you'll get an early warning from an update on this page before we do anything -- like offer earlybird stuff). In addition, if we go the reboot route, Jeff and GGG will have a little something to honor you guys, our first backers. Also, if things go the way I have planned, the possible reboot could turn out waaaaay bigger than this KS. So, if you're reading this and haven't backed yet, I promise you won't be disappointed if you throw in a buck now (which you won't even be charged if we're not funded) to get our updates. We're not out of surprises just yet!

Apocoplay - Been reading your posts here and on the forums and can't help but want you guys to succeed so I pledged :) Though, I'm now well over budget with my spending on games this year and will have to skip breakfast for the next few weeks!

Superbacker

cant you tell KS give 1 more month or something ? The rate new people fund the game is increasing each week . Add to that the extra coverage you have planned , its certain to get funded if it has some time more ..

Superbacker

Hey, all - we finally have the attention of some triple A press, good enough that there is still a fair chance of getting funded (a lot of video games make a large % in the last week, they tell us) IF they hit Monday-Tuesday. But this kind of thing is hard to control, and there's always the possibility that the really good press will hit too late. We're working out some plans, and we'll keep you posted.

:/ Yeah gaming mags/blogs aren't a good way to backers for games on KS. What pulls backers in are personalitys esp. youtubers. You need to do livestream play sessions with people like Jim Sterling, itmejp, akamikeb ect. Those are the kind of people that pull in backers and people also want to see the game played as well as the impressions from the personalities you get to play with you. Good luck!

Superbacker

I have to admit, it was CAD's mention that got me here. I was an Alteil player for quite a while but eventually got distracted by "other shiny things" in the world of gaming and gradually moved away.

When I read Tim's write-up, I thought "Hey, that sounds familiar ..." and checked it out. When I read the KS and the videos, I immediately realized that it was addressing most/all of the things that allowed me to get distracted from the first one. I immediately backed!

I then got lucky and got one of the last open slots in the Early Bird level so I am really *really* hoping this goes off because I want that, badly!! :D

@Kirby - Nice to have you with us!
This is our first kickstarter, and not only does it have some unique challenges, but we're learning what works and what doesn't. For example, we have close to 30 articles on gaming sites across the net. Nothing on triple A sites like IGN yet, but we got Kotaku and joystik.massivly. Together, this press has turned up very little in backers. In contrast, Tim buckley's single post and tweet about us has got a close second in number of backers, with number one being the players of Alteil 1 (Alteil Horizons is a sequel for those of you just joining us). We have a lot of big announcements and plans left, plans that should have been announced slowly but, due to circumstances beyond our control will all be ready in the last week. We're currently trying to figure out if there is any graceful way to leverage our big guns properly in the time we have left. There are always plans within plans and back up plans of course, we've been working on this game for some time now and certainly we aren't giving up.
In that line of thought, the first Alteil game began production in 2003. Some members of the Japanese team have been literally working on it for 10 years. A lot of Apocoplay's staff has been working on it for 7 years. If there's one thing we have proven it's our determination to keep going. When a company that had licensed the first game decided they'd rather switch it off than give it the upgrades it needed, we formed Apocplay for the purpose of stopping that from happening.
As for server speed, there won't be a line of code in the current Flash module that will see the light of day in Alteil Horizons. Actually, our specific architecture not only uses HTML5, but it puts 100% of the thinking on our servers (and out of your browsers), and so far our tests show it to be significantly faster than any other HTML5 game out there.
Single player content is also key to our plan. In fact, we've started by building the first solo adventure first (and there will hopefully be some big announcements in this area next week). My goal is to eventually have a module builder where users will be able to write and build their own solo modules for the community.

This game looks absolutely amazing, and I give the team at Apocoplay my full support. However, I do have a few questions which have given me some concern.

#1: Sustainability: Considering the Kickstarter has 10 days left as of this comment and the funding is only at ~$33k I am worried about the lifespan of the game. If $100k is not reached by October 6th will the project be canceled? And if the project is successful I hope the game is not short lived, with only 1 or 2 years of life. One of my greatest fears is pouring my hard-earned money into a game only to have the game's servers shut down because a lack of funding. I understand part of the whole point of a Kickstarter is to cultivate interest in a project, but can any of you at Apocoplay provide myself and others some peace of mind or assurance that the game will sustain itself for a long period of time?

#2: Servers: I hope the servers will be reasonably fast because as of right now, Alteil 1 is a tad bit on the slow side in terms of loading times, but I am sure that will all change with HTML5 so I am not too terribly worried about this one.

#3: Solo Play: Will it ever be possible for our characters to level off of NPCs, or to have solo campaigns in between seasons against certain NPCs? I think this idea would be amazing, since I don't always enjoy playing against other players for personal reasons; and it also would be nice to be able to disable chat altogether, not simply just clicking a different window to replace what is shown. Safeguarding against rude players always makes for a more enjoyable experience.

Okay, a lot of questions I need to catch up on. Forgive me if I miss one, and feel free to remind me.

@Ryan
- I totally agree with you. I've seen this happen from the industry side all the time - scary decisions go on in boardrooms. That said, I can't deny the feeling of discovery from opening a new pack of cards, -- it's something from my childhood I remember from when magic first came out. Also, considering the way deck-building works in Alteil -- pretty unique in the card-type game world -- I think drafting would be an awesome gametype for it.
Now by the end of Alteil 1, having looked over the purchasing records myself in detail while planning Alteil Horizens, I can tell you that the general purchasing pattern was one or two pre-builts or other packs of fixed (non-random) cards, modified by using the free cards available by various means. So the average player didn't seem to get their cards from random packs. There were the collector types as well, and they were lower in number but went for the random cards. Obviously, they enjoyed that type of thing. Now I haven't done a lot of purchasing in Scrolls, nor have I been on their forums so I don't know the general opinion about it, but I noticed they have a unique way of combining random packs with fixed cards and I'm pretty confident we'll be able to get these two styles for getting content to co-exist. I detail the plan for free players in that link Rom posted, essentially calibrating treasure drops from battles the way it's done for looting games.

@Relkin
- We might make a client, depending on how things go. There are a couple of benefits to that, but we'll always have a browser option. I'm not too worried about performance though. The HTML5 game is a 'dumb terminal' essentially playing animations according to a list of instructions. Once most of the animations are cached, it should be nearly instantaneous. All the thinking is done on our servers, and the only real communication between the two updating the list of instructions. (as you can imagine, this certainly makes the replay system easy to make...)

@Chad
-Thank you for your kind words! And remember, our job is to make and run a tactics game. Making strategies is kind of our thing.

I normally pass right over digital card games. I have a collection of yugioh cards and my wife has a small collection of magic cards but we don't actively play with them very often.

I usually find you have to be really hardcore into games like those to keep up with the masses or have a small group a friends who collect and play casually to get any kind of enjoyment out of them, neither of which I do.

This game was brought to my attention initially while going to read the latest Ctrl+Alt+Dlt comic. I often read the news posts as well. When ever Tim is an active part of something like this I usually at least take a glance in its direction. After looking the game over I am quite impressed and excited about some of the features. I like the concept of range on the playing field. It's something I haven't experienced before.

I hope Romdeau is right in his post below and that the kick starter picks up because I am highly excited for this game and I would be very disappointed if it did not get funded. I don't back a lot of kickstarters. This would make it only my third I believe. Good luck with reaching your goals. and I hope you have a plan if you don't because I really do want this game. I come back and pledge again if you tried to kickstart again.

Jonathan from what I understand we're still on track to reach our goal as Kickstarter projects tend to have a somewhat predictable curve-a bunch of activity at the beginning followed by a lull in the middle, followed by another burst of activity towards the last 2-3 days.

But I know the guys back east are hard at work and they are doing their best to expose Horizons to as many people as possible.